Photos

ARTICLES ABOUT PHOTOS BY DATE - PAGE 4

J ACK PRAUL, 51, of Washington Square West, co-owns Philadelphia Photographics, a digital-imaging and film photo lab in Midtown Village that has served photographers, artists and businesses since 1990. Q: How'd the biz start? A: My life partner, James Hood, who's 67, started the business. I was part of the team that came aboard in 1990 and helped set up darkrooms, build equipment and buy used equipment. I worked part time from 1990 to 1995, and in 1995 I came to work full time.

PAULSBOROThe North Jersey wrestling team under fire for a photo depicting members surrounding a hanged black practice dummy will compete in a state event beginning this weekend without half its starting lineup. Seven Phillipsburg High School wrestlers have been removed by school officials from the District 1 competition, which on Saturday starts the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association State Wrestling Tournament. An eighth wrestler, who was not seeded for the tournament, also has been disciplined.

The coach in Paul Morina hated this week. The educator in him loved it. The coach hated how his Paulsboro wrestling team was forced to deal with the dreaded "D" word in the days before the opening of the individual state tournament. "Distractions," Morina said Thursday morning of the controversy surrounding the surfacing of a photo of seven Phillipsburg High School wrestlers posing in front of a dark-skinned dummy hanging from a noose and wearing a Paulsboro wrestling T-shirt.

A photo of students from a North Jersey high school depicting the lynching of a practice dummy wearing a Paulsboro wrestling T-shirt has gone viral, invoking claims of racism. The photo was made public Monday. It shows seven young white males - most wearing Phillipsburg High School athletic attire, two with their hoods pointed - surrounding the hanged, black figure. Superintendent George M. Chando of the Phillipsburg School District said in a statement that the district investigated the matter and "upon conclusion of the investigation, actions were taken by the district consistent with its policies.

Bob Gumpert tried for years to get into jail. But it's hard if you don't commit a crime - and you want to bring a camera and recorder with you. "They don't like photographers to come in, especially those who come in and say, 'I just want you to let me in and not have any editorial control over what I'm doing,' " said the San Francisco-based photographer. After years of documenting the lives of detectives, prosecutors, and police, Gumpert persuaded a local sheriff to open the jails to him and his camera.

MAYBE THE Philadelphia mob fizzled out when Joey Merlino got pinched in 1999. Or maybe it continued to thrive well into the 21st century on a steady diet of video-poker revenue and loan-sharking juice. Depends on your benchmarks for a successful criminal organization. But those photos? They were a bad idea. As closing arguments began yesterday in the retrial of reputed mob boss Joseph "Uncle Joe" Ligambi and his nephew George Borgesi, federal prosecutors broke out the photo album again.

Sometimes, the breadth and din of a big city conspire to make a person feel alone, anonymous, unseen. But on East Passyunk Avenue in South Philadelphia, neighbors are not only known, but celebrated. During the holiday season, 27 photos of neighborhood residents have been displayed from the windows of a three-story building at Passyunk and Tasker Street. Lights illuminate the 18- by 24-inch black-and-white photos, displayed on translucent corrugated plastic. Between 4 p.m. and 1:30 a.m. each day, the guy from down the corner and the lady across the street glow in the early winter darkness, and mere people are transformed - into Christmas decorations, into neighborhood icons, into art. "Turning this building we bought into a giant holiday greeting is our Christmas wish for our neighbors," said Kate Mellina, whose husband, Dave Christopher, took the photos.

PETER JOHN Williams is a South Philly guy from 3rd and Wolf streets, a Mummer since childhood, a lawyer, and now, a first-time author. His Philadelphia: The World War I Years (Arcadia Publishing) is a photo history of the city that sent thousands overseas to fight while an influenza epidemic killed 16,000 here. "There were so many men in the service in 1918," said Williams, 57, "there weren't enough here to dig the graves. And people were afraid they would get influenza from picking up the bodies.

October 11, 2013 | BY DAVID MAIALETTI, maialed@phillynews.com, 215-854-5143

THERE IS something refreshing in the bare-bones approach to the new exhibition at the National Constitution Center, "Capture The Moment: The Pulitzer Prize Photographs. " White walls. Black frames. Very little text. It's every photojournalist's dream. Curator Cyma Rubin gives the more than 150 images center stage, allowing the viewer to absorb their content without distraction. A fitting choice, since the images contain some of the most important moments of their time. The show includes every winner since the Pulitzer Prize board began awarding the photography prize in 1942.

The first image in the exhibition of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs set to open at the National Constitution Center on Friday bears an all-too-familiar intensity. A pair of Syrian snipers, holed up in a dim room, lasers of daylight streaming through bullet holes all around them, nervously watch for their next target. Javier Manzano, freelancing for Agence France-Presse, the photographer who captured the intimacy, anxiety, and strange beauty in this image, later said, "I didn't know it was a sniper's nest.